


Lost and Found

by CharismaticEnticer



Category: Die Anstalt, The Holders (Creepypasta)
Genre: Ableist Language, Abstract Horror, All the negative things in the world, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Anxiety, Asphyxiation, Blood and Gore, Colored Words, Creepypasta, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Eye Trauma, F/M, Gen, Horror, I deal with six Holders out of several, Kroko gets some much needed depth, Major Character Injury, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Mild Spoilers, POV Third Person Limited, Panic Attacks, Present Tense, Psychological Horror, SACSSS, Sensory Deprivation, Silence, Sly reads Harry Potter, Stealth Night Vale, cosmic horror, gets pretty intensive in Chapter 3, mention of rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-24
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-01-09 20:47:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1150633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharismaticEnticer/pseuds/CharismaticEnticer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mental institutions and halfway houses are a dime a dozen in this soulless world. Only one exists for the unsound of mind that are not human in physical form, even if so in spirit. But limits do not exist on creed, colour, or species. In that regard, the Holders do not discriminate. </p><p>Die Anstalt/<a href="http://theholders.org/?Special:Main">The Holders Series</a> crossover. Complete!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Darkened Doors

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to put _something_ up this January to tide Die Anstalt fan(s) on here over for a little bit. (I might need it - I have two people subscribed to me now for some reason!) So what better way than to go back into the WIP-that-will-be-added-to-hopefully-soon pot?
> 
> Die Anstalt fic reader(s): **The premise of the Holders Series is explained within the body of the fic itself.** The Holders Series fic reader(s): **The premise of Die Anstalt is "disabled cuddly toys in an institution", hopefully also at least partially explained in the fic.** There, now neither of the fandoms have an excuse not to think this crossover makes sense.
> 
> Note: Unfortunately, my self imposed rule of "no ableist language if I can help it" cannot apply as strenuously to this work as it can to any of my other ones. Because the crux of the Holders Series takes place in mental institutions - and, in particular, because one of the Holders I'm dealing with is explicitly the Holder of Sanity (it seemed like a good idea at time of writing) - I'm sort of stymied in that regard. Nonetheless, I'll try to ensure it only emerges when absolutely required by the narrative or by dramatic irony, not when it's unnecessary.
> 
> This chapter was originally written and published on September 30th 2012. (That's pretty sad, isn't it?) The first three chapters have been rewritten during the removal from LJ and transferral to AO3, and the changes include clarification of POV and the aforementioned cull on unnecessary ableist language.
> 
> Die Anstalt © Martin Kittsteiner. The Holders Series © its creators, whoever those may be.

Humans have been coming more and more since Dr Kindermann left.

Granted, the place has never been free of them: the staff, the head therapist and founder, the nurse. But actual visitors have always been rare. Naysayers to the idea of this particular field of psychology pretend the place does not exist, while those who do only go - used to go - when their best friends throughout childhood develop problems that a simple cuddle cannot solve.  
Or, at least, that's how a human would see things. As far as the inmates of this particular asylum are concerned, there is no outside at all. There might have been, once, but so long ago as to fade out of the memory.

And yet, now that the nice man with the beard and the bowler hat has gone away, and the raven in black has stepped up to take his place, humans come, as many as three a day, one at a time. They never enter the patient lounge, where the disabled cuddly toys sit and focus on their playthings and neuroses; but they come, speaking in hushed tones or loud incomprehensible ones to Nurse Nadel, who usually works at the front desk. Often, only once.  
None are the new therapist they've been promised, that much is obvious.

If the toys were even allowed to figure out what they are saying, it would be a mercy. But no, they have a fixed area of exploration, made even stricter since the humans started arriving. They cannot leave the lounge during the day, nor their bedrooms at night, and they are never, under any circumstances, to go up the stairs. Dr Wood is the one to escort them between these, as she in the white dress and veil is often too tired, or too sad, or anything else to make the journey.

He won't answer their questions, no matter how much they ask. He claims it to be none of their concern.  
The only thing that prevents them from just agreeing and forgetting about the whole unknown mess is the one word they **can** persistently pick up on, from the other side of the double doors. A word that makes no sense, given how little else they hear.

"Besuchen". [Visit].

***

One day, at the second rumbling of a car engine outside, Dolly finds that she can stand it no more. The affair has been thrashing at the back of her skull like a woodpecker. She's tried to ignore it, but today is a 'let everything get to you' day, and resistance has been penetrated at last. She abandons the xylophone that she and Lilo have been playing with and bounds over to the door separating them and the nurse.

"[Dolly, where are you going?]" Kroko squeaks after her, from behind his usual blanket. "[You're not allowed to go out there.]"  
"[I'm not going anywhere,]" she calls back, "[I'm just taking a quick look. If I don't, it's gonna drive me mad.]"

The sheep eases the door open just a smidgen and gently pokes her head through, staying low.  
The nurse is at her desk as usual, and seems to be engrossed in painting over her just-unvarnished nails. A dull blue, rather than the reddish pink of before. She looks a lot older as a whole than she has ever appeared, viewed from basically below like this. Wearier, brittle, chipped and yet not quite fractured.

Something grabs at her rear hooves in an attempt to pull her back inside; it feels like Dr Wood's wing. She kicks it off and stays put, unswayed. He manages to get somewhere a second time, getting her by the scruff of her neck, but she just runs straight to where she was again, and by the time this is done the front door is opening and someone's coming inside.  
Wood does not make a third try, though he does mutter a curse just quietly enough for her to hear. She can feel him nearby.

The man who enters is quite tall, almost too much so. His hair is such a mess she can't tell if it's naturally black or not, but his glasses are straight, and the suit would be smart were it not for the rips on his trousers or the small, abstract glow coming from his shirt pocket. And... is it Dolly's so-called hallucinations playing up, or does he have short sharp claws on the tips of his fingers? He can't have, can he?

Nadel looks up at the newcomer from her own nails. "[Can I be of any help to you?]" she asks, and at least her voice sounds normal enough. Dolly feels the pressure of someone climbing on top of her; a flash of brown near her ear tells her Dub has turned two into three.

"[Yes, you can. I'd like to visit someone who calls himself the, um, Holder of the Grail?]"

It is as if the nurse suddenly forgets every aspect of herself: who she is, what she's doing here, how to breathe... She freezes, stares out at the man, unmoving, and apparently unblinking too. Stuck still.

"[N-Nurse Nadel?]" someone whispers in frantic concern; Kroko's caved in too. "[Are--]"  
Someone else shushes him.

The visitor isn't as taken aback by this as the patients are; if anything, he seems prepared for this. He looks down at the tatters that mark his legs, his right hand forming a loose fist. "[The, can I see the Holder of the Grail please?]" he tries again.  
And then he says no more. A loud thud resonates across the room, and all in the doorway flinch. By the time eyes open again, the human has fallen flat on his front, the other palm now deviating to the join between neck and head. She can feel sympathy pain where the woodpecker has worn away at her.  
A blink, of her eyelids or perhaps of the dangling light, and he is gone, not even an imprint on the floor where he lay. Nadel snaps back into remembrance, pauses, and continues with her nails as if what just happened is nothing but a fly at the edge of her vision.

Most everyone falls back and looks around at each other in mixtures of alarm, confusion and fear. Sly's pupils are almost as wide as his eyes, Lilo has retreated behind Kroko, and Dub says quietly "The shit was that?!" when he probably thinks no one's paying attention.   
"T-"th' shit was 'at" is reit!" Dolly splutters. "[We all saw the same thing here, yeah? The man - claws on his - and hit on the head with the-?]" She's met with nods all around. "[And the nurse just stood there! Christ, does she do that with everyone who comes in here?]"

"[No. Not all of them ask for the Grail.]"  
This comes from Dr Wood, stirring at last, and the sight and sound of him rouses a righteous need for answers in her. "[How do you know that?]" Her hooves plant themselves firmly on the waxed floor.  
"[In a way, I knew this would happen,]" he says with a sigh, deflecting the question. "[Even toys like you, the already committed, are curious. I couldn't keep you from it forever. Still, I'd prefer you didn't find out as abruptly as this...]"

Sly butts in: "[Keep us from how? What's going on?]"  
"[And can you actually answer us this time? Honestly?]"

He does, though not right away. He makes sure the double doors are shut once again, then turns to them all. "[I won't bother to ask if all of you are really ready. I doubt anyone could be. I wasn't. In fact - ] Dub?"  
"Yeah?"  
"You should probably go back to your skipping. The less toys hear what I have to say, the better."

Dub stands up, but doesn't move. "That's your way of saying you're gonna give a German conference again, isn't it?"  
"Let's say it is for now," he says flatly. Kroko poorly suppresses a gulp, and she can't help but agree with what the sound implies.

***

Once the outlier has returned to his exercise regime, the doctor speaks to them again. He has told countless truths and lies in what of his past he can dig up, but neither his own voice nor content have been quite this - what is the word? Unnatural.

"[All right. I shall tell you what I know, which is admittedly not as much as I'd like to. The man you just saw come in was a Seeker.]"

"[Oh, like the one on an air broom?]"  
"[Sly, I'll thank you not to interrupt. Seekers are people on missions, so to speak, to acquire a number of significant Objects, most of which can be found in any mental institution such as this, in any city, in any country. Before Dr Kindermann left - or, more accurately, before my arrival - ]" he subtly puffs his chest up at this - "[very few knew of this place and took it seriously. No chance for publicity, good or ill.]"  
He deflates and begins to walk along a fixed area of floor, speaking more to himself now. "[But as we rose in significance in the outside world, we also became a target, and a resting place, of the Holders.]"

"[...And the Holders are?]"  
"[Those who keep the Objects secure until a sufficiently prepared Seeker comes for them. Those who defend them to the teeth, so I have heard.]"  
"[So, we've got a Holder of the Grail somewhere upstairs?]" asks Dolly skeptically, not that she can afford to be.   
"[There is more than a Grail. There are mirrors, flowers, masks. Claws like the ones you saw. Objects that can't be held in the hand; Objects that have not yet been found, or even described.]"

"[That sounds like a lot to carry,]" Kroko says from the other side of the blanket.  
"[It is, for those who wish to put them all in one place. That's one of the big ambiguities: should the Objects be kept apart, or brought together? The answers differ between everyone I've asked.]" A wing runs through his hood forcefully as he talks and paces, voice surprisingly calm all things considered. "[Are the Holders working against us by keeping their items close, or with us by stopping the unknown outcome of their reunion? Does Nurse Nadel retain her memories of the people she takes away? Where do the Seekers go? What does getting the Objects truly entail? How many do we keep? And what of Dr Kindermann himself? Though I know - well, did know - more than any of you, there's so much left in the dark that just thinking of what is still left to find out... it's enough to play on the mind.]"  
From the sense of unease crackling in the air between them, he doesn't doubt they agree.

Dr Wood stops walking and faces them all again, in a thin layer of composure. "[Even knowing how little I know is its own torment, in many ways. That is why I kept it from you all for as long as I did,]" he confirms. "[You all have enough problems as it is. Now that you know what I told you, the unfathomability will tear you apart; but knowing too much can be a danger in itself, if how Nadel is acting is anything to go by. Ignorance in this regard is the true bliss.]"  
"[It _is_ a bit of a brainful to take in at once, yeah,]" the sheep admits. She laughs nervously, but it sounds fake, and none of the rest echo it.  
Instead the raven snaps, "[do not underestimate what I have said, Dolly. Any of you. I don't want to be responsible for madnesses far beyond a simple rectus trementis or god delusion, but in telling you, that might be inevitable. If so, the only way to stem it would be to become Seekers yourselves, and for you, us, that simply isn't an option.]"

Sly has been just staring at Wood throughout his speech since his first outburst, and at just the right time, he speaks his mind again. "[Wait, why not?]"  
"[If we cannot handle the minimum knowledge, what good will we be when we seek more?]"  
"[I've got the knowledge and I'm fine,]" Sly says, unaware of how alone he is in this regard. "[So **also** why not?]"

"[Because it's--]"  
Wood stops himself, tripping up on that point.

What other reasons prevent them from becoming Seekers, apart from their limited capacity?  
Those who run the website he found, those behind eyewitness accounts on forums, the handful of people he got answers from directly... All were different in skin tone, gender, stance, and none came out unscathed.  
None were cuddly toys. And toys are small and physically durable and, in the case of these, already 'unstable' in some regard. So, perhaps, strong enough to cope with whatever lies ahead. And, if that fails, slippery enough to escape.  
They are even already in a mental institution, as their home, so there will not be far to go should they decide to turn back...

"[Maybe it isn't impossible,]" he concedes. "[Ill advised, though. Are you sure you will be able to handle the pressure, or anticipation, or... anything?]"

Silence among the crowd, glances exchanged from hippo to snake to sheep to crocodile and back again.  
At last, it is the blanketed reptile who speaks. "[I'm not sure. But if everyone else is, I'll have to be,]" says Kroko. "[You can't unsay what you said, and, well. If we can't unknow it, we'll have to help, any way we can.]"  
"[Yeah, what he said,]" Sly adds redundantly.

This is enough for Dr Wood. "[If that's the way you see it, I can't argue.]"

Dolly's shoulders sag, then tighten again, as though one great burden and another, more bitter one have exchanged perches.  
"[Okay. So what do we do? Do we just go out there and ask the nurse about the Grail?]"  
"[No. For all we know, the man who came in could still be there. Besides, no more than one Seeker has ever come to the desk at a time, so I don't think we can go as a group.]"  
Her head tilts. "[So who's gonna go first then?]"

"[Maybe Wood can go.]"  
"[And leave all of you unsupervised?]"  
"[Only for a while,]" Sly corrects. "[When you come back with a thing, one of us will go next.]"

 _[When I come back... You talk as if you're certain of my fate.]_ But once again, the snake makes a good case. Wood has the greatest potential of them all, being a staff member. If he can survive the hunt for one of the sought Objects, so too can they.

"[You have a point. All right, I'll go. Everybody else, stay in this room, and **only** in this room,]" he emphasizes. "[Dolly, while I'm gone, you can tell Dub what I told the rest of you. I feel he would comprehend it better coming out of you.]"  
"[Heh. I doubt that, but I'll try.]"

His footsteps head to the double doors again, but he stops before he can touch the boundary. The doctor turns and looks at his patients, his workplace, for one last time.

"[If worse comes to worse,]" he says, in a lower tone than even before, "[and I fail to come back, do not try and--]"

He stops. Thinks. Understands.

"[You can try and follow me, if you are brave enough. You can stay here if your resolve fails. Either way, it will be too late.]"


	2. He Who Falls First

The door swings shut after the exiting doctor, and the metallic clang echoes from every corner of the reception he walks into. With it, any hope of dismissing the past few minutes as the brainchild of a hypothetical and boredom is sealed behind him.  
There is no going back. Not now that all of them know about the Holders, the Objects kept by each, and those who try to take them. Not now that he has been technically nominated as the first of the last.

To be a Seeker. A mistake, or a blessing?  
On one wing, it is reckless in all regards. Dr Wood has a career here - no, a legacy. He's built it up from the ground to become the best psychologist in his field, if not in the whole damn business. To abandon it all now to hunt down and collect Objects, a task that will take the best part of at least a year... so much work will be left undone!

But as he has said before, there is too much to find out for it to be a completely worthless option. Finally, what scraps he's gotten will be fleshed out. He will gain experience, the likes of which he never could here.  
He will gain knowledge. At least one of the Holders will give him this. And some provide other rewards. The website was sketchy, but words from it leap out at him now. "Agility". "Elements". "Seeing truths". "Unlimited understanding of emotion"...

One part of him thinks: _[How could these not be worth the risks?]_  
The other: _[I still don't actually know what the risks are.]_

He closes his eyes and tries to clear the mind of all resistance, replacing it with faith. He is Dr Wood, PhD. He has gotten through the trials of being unrecognized, shaken off criticism of his methods and ideas, moved on from the blank space that makes up his life before his job.  
If he can do that, he can do this.

Despite everything, doubt still lingers. _[You can leave. You can get out of the building and no one will ever know. Better than throwing your entire world away. To pursue this would be madness, it would be in--]_

...and in that unspoken cut-off word, the perfect starting point makes itself clear.

Now that he has even less choice in the matter, he opens his eyes again, ruffles his feathers, and goes closer to his receptionist to get her attention.

"[Nurse Nadel?]"  
She has been dabbing at her nails with some tissue paper to make patterns in the blue varnish, and it is from this that he distracts her. "[Oh! Good afternoon, Doctor. Is something wrong? Has Sly thrown something at Dolly again?]"  
"[No, nothing of that kind,]" he tries to reassure. "[It has simply come to my attention that I have been neglecting one of my, shall we say, lesser known patients.]"  
"[Ah, right. I know progress has been limited with him, but I'm sure Lilo will open up to the others eventu--]"  
"[I wasn't actually referring to Lilo, Nadel.]"  
"[Then who do you mean?]"

"[I simply mean that I wish to visit someone who calls himself the Holder of Sanity.]"

Even she seems to feel the mixture of inevitability and hope that hits the bottom of his stomach; she gives him a strange, confused look. She is puzzling him out, determining whether to believe him or not. He barely believes himself.  
Is this one where he needs to repeat the question? Like the Grail? He tries it. "[Nadel? I wish to speak to the Holder of Sanity please.]"

"[...Are you feeling all right?]" she asks after five seconds' pause.  
"[I'm fine. Take me to the Holder of Sanity.]"  
"[Are you sure?]"  
"[Positive. Holder of Sanity. I'm in a hurry.]" He is unrelenting.

"[I, I'm going to call a doctor, okay?]" she says, never taking her eyes off of him, but he can see her right hand reach for, and depress, what is presumably a button under her desk.  
 _[What? Should that be part of the-?]_ "[But I **am** the doctor! I'm the only medically qualified staff in--]"  
But he is cut off by the grasp of a rough and calloused hand picking him up from the floor; apparently, in these circumstances, employees can emerge from the ether.

Scooped up in his arms, Wood is escorted every bobbing and tumultuous step of the way through the door that should have led to the staff kitchen, across dimly-lit yellow and blue corridors. Rooms that look like they haven't been occupied since the asylum was first erected so many years ago are mixed with locked doors hiding what sound like the snores of patients he has yet to meet.  
He doesn't bother looking up at the man carrying him. He is running too fast, so his guide would be a blur; besides, if he himself is the Holder, it wouldn't do to provoke him so soon.

Eventually they reach the darkest spot, a well-distanced corner of the institution. A straitjacket hangs on a hook on a wall, and an aged door next to it. Where does it lead? To his goal?  
There is a pause, a sticky fragment of time where his brain screams once more to _[turn back]_. But he has gotten this far. He can't.

With a shove and a rip, he's placed inside the straitjacket. It's designed for a human, but it seems to fit him too; either he or it has contorted to size. The sleeves are stretched, bound and secured, and neither doctor says a word. There would be no point.  
And then Wood is hurled headlong inside and he hits a surface hard, but it is cushiony and he bounces off into a corner. The door shuts, and a clicking sound proves it is locked. Walls, floor and ceiling are made up of nothing but faded cream with slight hints of yellow, and bits of white from a rip higher up.  
Dr Wood is in a padded room, the kind that Kindermann swore from the start he would never have in this place. He has been marked as unsalvageable.

 _[Is this the risk you intended?]_  
No, it isn't. But if it's the only one, it cannot be so bad. His journey has begun and he is one step closer to getting an Object. One step closer to getting answers about a world of which he had so few clues.

_[This must be a test. The Holder will come for me sooner or later, and I will get my reward._  
 _[Right?]_

***

There is not an awful lot to do in a padded cell if you neither have a goal in mind nor like the sound of your own voice. Even if both apply to you, as they do to Wood, occupying the mind can still be a tedious process.  
To pass the time, the raven paces around, explores every contour of the soft and fluctuating floor. Trying to feel it with his wings is a fool's errand, so he sinks his feet into each rise and fall, rooting himself.  
He also gives lectures. He pretends to have the toys he left behind as an audience and rehearses the speeches he was - _[is, you could still get out of here]_ \- going to make at the next Conference of Plush Psychoanalysis. Once, he tries to speak to a whole auditorium of imaginary people, but that collapses almost immediately: his booming voice bounces off of each curve and fractures in the echo, pounding it in that, in reality, Wood is utterly alone in here.

He cycles between talking, walking and trying to sleep for a time, he doesn't know how long. It could be days. It could be months. Now he knows how Sly feels when he says he forgets 'what when it is'.  
The patients. He wonders what they are doing without his guidance. If it's only been days, they could still be waiting for him, or they could be trying to go about their routine, except having to sleep in the lounge itself. He hopes they haven't given up on him so easily.  
If it's been months, who knows where they are now? Cured by the therapist that they've been trying to find for eons now, and settled into new homes? Or decaying without his presence? Unrepaired? Broken? Macabre thoughts flit in his mind of chaos running rampant, stuffing floating everywhere, fabric torn asunder by in-fighting and bitternesses left unchecked.  
Thoughts of the calibre he has never had before.

Perhaps he is falling into their trap himself, and being locked up in here is a preemptive measure.

Then, as if the guess was an unseen signal, the voices begin.  
At first it is just one. Barely a whisper, that sounds like it comes more from outside than anywhere in the creases on the walls. But one becomes two very quickly, three, a crowd, many, lots, constantly multiplying, swelling, becoming louder and more legible to the ears.

 _[...and of course then she dumped me, and it was a little hard to let that go...]_  
They talk of pain. They talk of how their lives self-destruct. Self-destructed.  
 _[...have you seen the drawing of my heart here? Those lines inside it are zig zaggy, I think it looks pretty...]_  
With every new person he hears, the torment they speak of gets worse. Inflicted by their own hands, or those of others. From the emotional to the physical to the kind that would get you in a place just like this.  
 _[...AND STEAM, SHE POISONS THE AIR. SAY YOU HAVE A FAMILY, SAY IT...]_

And then they become somehow clearer and indistinguishable. All of them are saying conflicting things in different tones, some emotionless, some screaming, some doing nothing but sobbing, but all telling their stories from everywhere and anywhere beyond the cushioned barriers. To no one in particular, to everyone, to him. Man, woman, toy, child.  
Wood both tries and doesn't try to listen. They overwhelm him with their talk, of how much suffering there is in the world that he hasn't been able to heal or reach. He shuts his eyes, but he cannot close his ears, for now their words start to fall into a pattern and sound alike, talking of being _[like us]_ , _[feel like us] [hate like us] [suffer like us] [like us like us like us_ **like us?** ]

They fall silent as the final syllable leaves their absent mouths, and it forms a painful sharpness and he needs to fill it.  
"[I will not share your stories!]" he shouts, the first thing to come into his mind.

The caterwaul begins anew, but he doesn't open his eyes. Who knows what he will see if he does? The floor no longer feels soft underneath him, for he no longer feels a floor at all, but somehow he is still, with only the hospital and the hundred million voices for company, an ocean of words, [cruel] [agony] [cuddly] [knives] [hurt].

[Cuddly]? That catches his attention. His mind opens, and he sifts through the white noise to find the one who said that.  
 _[...toys, or so says Kinderm...]_ There it is! A male voice, low, one of the calmest in here. Familiar, somehow. He knows he must listen to it, if it jumped out at him like that. He focuses on it.  
 _[...ounded in 2002, with no change in staff until its later years, when Kindermann left and a raven stepped up to...]_ Is he talking about this very asylum?  
Another cry or twenty pushes past the words to try and drown him out. No, stop, be quiet. He tries all the harder, and the more he can hear, the quieter the others become, dropping to whispers and whimpers.  
 _[...inevitable end we must all come someday. It is a cold, solid fact. It is their only way of escaping the thorns of their past._

 _[But then, you would know about escaping,_ wouldn't you, Wood?]

Silence again, but not absolute. In the background there is the whistling of a wind far far away.  
[Open your eyes.]  
There is little point in not obeying. When he does, he finds in shock that the padded room has gone, as if it never existed, although the straitjacket still binds him into unmoving. He can see it around him, even in the barest of light. He tests his surroundings by lifting and dropping one foot, and the cold surface and the chink tells him he is instead surrounded by glass, a box of it, the kind that stretches forever into the distance.  
Everything else is a void, a black hole for everything except this doctor, the glass, and the echoes of what he prays is not a memory.

And, coming closer to him, a man. No, more than that, and yet not. A single body, but as he gets closer he looks like three at exactly the same time, an amalgamation thereof. The human who asked for the Grail. Dr Kindermann. And - could that be - Sigmund Freud?  
[I have to say,] he speaks in a blend that could belong to one, all or none, [it isn't often I see a cuddly toy come to me. But no matter. A Seeker is a Seeker. Do you have any questions?]

 _[A thousand is closer to the mark,]_ he thinks. What he actually asks is: "[Are you the Holder of Sanity?]"  
There is no response.  
"[What precisely is this place?]"  
Nothing from the man.  
"[What do you mean I know about escaping?]" His voice cracks somewhat, but he doesn't know why.  
Nothing at all. What will he respond to?

"[The voices I heard. Back in the cell,]" Wood attempts. "[What drove them to insanity?]"

That question he can answer, it seems. And he does, in detail that even Wood himself could not achieve. He weaves a tale of the lives of the voices, and reiterates their ruinations, and talks of their deaths, right down to the last bursting pustule and broken bone. He recognizes some as beings he has met or tried to treat before.  
It is as if Kindermann-Freud-Grail was there for each and every one of them. As if he was responsible.

Something in the background drops his concentration on the story, just barely. Something present beyond the transparent case. Something pulsing. It's darker than its surroundings.  
 _[How can that be? Out there there is nothing but emptiness. How can something be blacker than black?]_  
A puzzle, to be sure. But another distraction from the important voice.

The combination-person keeps on telling ever more horrible truths in a way that makes the straitjacket unbearably crushing to wear. And still it bounces around at the edges of his vision, hiding behind his hood, defying physics and optical sense.  
He turns his head to face it when he can bear it no more. He focuses on what turns out to be a dot, large and round and dancing, for a mere second.

This is as long as it takes for it to be the second to last thing he ever sees.  
He realizes he has failed in his task as soon as he hears the voice cut out mid-word. He feels the glass, and his future, crumple into stardust under his feet.  
He inverts on himself and the falling begins.

***

 **To Know Too Little Is Worse Than Knowing Nothing; To Know Too Much Can Tear The Mind Apart.**  
 **Isn't It Nice To Get Something So Fundamentally Right?**  
 **Enjoy It, Wood. Cling To It. This Comfort Will Soon Vanish Like The World Around You, And An Eternity Is A Long Time To Go Without...**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you spot my stealth reference to my new second-favourite Night Vale episode of all time, potential Listeners? I'm sorry, I couldn't resist. The original sentence was " _[...begged her and begged her to stop but she just kept kicking at me and god those teeth and she dug them into it hurts just talking...]_ ", which, let's face it, rings close enough for that to be a justifiable replacement. 
> 
> Besides, if we can crossover The Holders and Die Anstalt, there's more than enough room for a little Night Vale.
> 
> Oh, forgot to mention: This chapter was originally written and published on October 3rd 2012.


	3. Bloody Business Ever

"Wood's not coming back, is he?"

Dub's question, splitting the air, is the first thing anyone's said in some time. After Wood left them alone in here, they've been trying to calm themselves down and do something else, at Kroko's suggestion. But the silence hanging over the place like a thick fog makes it clear that wasn't a good idea.  
Everyone's taken the information in in their own way. It never really hit Dolly until her re-telling the explanation to the turtle, the scope of the whole thing, what they've gotten themselves into; the internal freaking out still hasn't quite worn off. Kroko himself hasn't said another word on the subject, sitting in a corner. Sly's tried to get her to explain things better to him, but she doubts he's actually understood any of it.  
And now that both of them have started waiting by the door together, Dub has just made the situation that much scarier, in a way that even his normally comforting company cannot cure.

"Dolly," he prompts.  
"What?"  
"I said Wood isn't coming back. You think something's gone wrong in there?"  
"Pssh. It's bin an hour, two, since he left? It's nae a problem yit. There's still time fur 'im to finish doin'... whatever th' hell he's doin' to gie 'at hin'," she says, admittedly a bit more clipped than necessary, and glances back down from the clock she just checked. That's something that's always bothered her about Dub. The guy's a cutie and all, but he just can't grasp the concept of patience.

Yet, two hours is a long time. Dolly's not in one of her worse off moods, otherwise she'd peg him for dead, no question. She still isn't all that confident that he's gonna get out of there without some kind of hitch - just because she's not depressed right now doesn't mean she's stupid.  
Even if she **has** been hemming and hawing about going to find one of the Holders herself. It's been eating at her brain, not just in one spot like the woodpecker of suspicion, but all over it. A miasma.

"What do you reckon he's doing, anyway?" he asks, interrupting her thoughts again.  
"Nae sure. Whatever gits 'im th' hin' he's gonnae fur, Ah suppose."  
He's scratching his head when she looks back at him. "That's another thing I don't get. These Objects, I think you said they're called. How many of them are there? Like, in the world?"  
"At leest two. Dunno hoo mony else."  
"Are they all at _this_ place? Can't they look elsewhere?"  
Oh god, the torrent has started. "Ah dunnae kinn. He said any city, sae I guess so."  
"Then why do they keep coming here?"  
"It must be close t--"  
"Does it have to be a mental place like this?"  
"I hink he said so, ay--"  
"Why'd they only start coming here now? Have these things been around forever? Why haven't we heard of this before?"

"I **dornt know** , okay?!" she snaps at him at last, kicking her front hoof. "I dornt know I dornt know I dornt know! Ah tauld ye literally _everythin'_ Wood tauld us befair he buggered aff, an' until he comes back - unless - jist - will ye hauld aff oan th' questions?!"  
She regrets this almost instantly, as Dub slumps down and jolts his head against the solid wood outline. "Excuse me for wanting to get some answers!" he tries to shout, but it comes across more desperate than angry. Kroko shrinks further back in the corner.

Dolly lets the resulting cool-down rest for a few seconds, to get the tension out of their systems, before moving closer to him and trying to mend the rift. "Sorry, Dub. F-fur yellin'. I shooldnae hae yelled."  
"Nah, 's my fault," he replies grudgingly. "Forgot you're just as frustrated and - uh, just frustrated as I am."

He hasn't said it aloud, but she can tell, from the look in his eyes and the slight shake in his body when one catches the other in a sudden tight hug. He's scared, like the rest of them. Like her.

The thought-eating virus rears its head again as they break apart. It tells her that if they want answers that badly, what better way to find them than to do it herself?  
With each second that passes, the idea has grown more merit. The longer they wait here without any news from him, the more moods are going to rise, and then a fight will break out and everyone's in trouble. At least if Dolly is out there too, two Objects could be found at once, and she won't have to deal with question marks without the full stops.  
She's already committed herself to this just by letting Wood out in the first place. She might as well see it through.

"Listen, Dub. Aam gonna go out an' look fur one ay th' Objects," she says before she can backtrack on her decision as usual.  
"Oh no you're not. Wood's not back yet."  
"Ah ken, but whit else is thaur fur me t' dae besides sit haur an' fuss us aw silly? I promise I'll come back," she insists at his crestfallen expression. "Ah will. I jist... I cannae stay haur. Knowin' whit we know. Do ye mind?"

He thinks on that for a few seconds, then stands up and moves out of the doorway, as if he knows he can't stop her either way.  
"Alrecht, cheers. I'll jist be out fur as lang as it takes, 'en I'll come straight back." _Ah can do this. Ah can totally do this._ Encouragement bolsters her every step as she pushes the door open one more time. It has to.

"Dolly, don't--" his voice begins when she's halfway through, bringing her inside again, then cutting off to nothing.  
"Dornt what?"

"...Don't lose track of who's waiting for you in here, okay, sweetheart?"  
A painful thump rocks her chest. They've been kinda together for a while, but he's never called her sweetheart before... He must really want her to get back from this one.  
She gives him what she hopes is a look of determination. "Dornt worry, I won't. See ye later."

***

Dolly hopes she never has to go through something like that again. She's spent quite a long time in this place, for better or worse, and been around toys and staff alike by force and will.  
But in all that time, she's never seen Nurse Nadel **cry** the way she did, calm breaking into scowl then into a lost plaintive sadness that will not fade even as she leads her to wherever. Eyes dull and lifeless, feet shuffling on the ground, nails dripping with undried red paint to make up for the tears the human has already let loose.

Logically it's down to how little she knows. If she'd been told that such a pretty much random and blustered choice would have that kind of effect on a person... It was literally the first word that popped into her head.  
But a dark part of her (oh joy, like she wants that right now) insists it's down to idiocy. Wanting to see the Holder of Agony is just asking for trouble.

They don't walk very far at all, past one door and another and another, but it takes quite a while, what with the stumbling gait. She tries to ask the nurse what she can do to help, with no success. After a bit, the leading slows and stops; they've reached a door without a number or name on its front. (She doesn't know why this surprises her - none of the entrances in this hall have name or number plates - but it just looks odd for this one in particular.)

Still caught up in what must be horrid and turgid thoughts from the look of her, Nadel opens the door for Dolly. It's barely visible inside, no clue as to what awaits her, and she stumbles back despite herself.  
 _Nae, dornt do 'at,_ she scolds her traitorous legs. _Today's bin a brae day so far. Ah can do this._  
That doesn't really stop her steps from faltering as she moves further into maybe having one foot in the room. Her pathetic sheep side is rearing back up, bleating at her to run, get out and go back to Dub and Kroko and Lilo and Sly and not fall into the same trap as the raven did. And, to her shame and credit, she almost does.

The only thing that stops her is the sharp, painful kick that sends her hurtling inside once and for all.

She lands on her back, right on the targeted area, and skids into what she hopes is just wet paint on the nearest wall. Pain ricochets from the small spot to big, rumbling and wobbling every bit of her from within. _Motherf- **oww** I hink 'at tore somethin'._  
She tries to get up on unsteady feet. Now that she's settled she can take in the room itself, or rather the smell of it, since it seems to be nothing but smell and splodge, even with faint grey outlines of corners and ceiling if she focuses really hard. Mostly of alcohol, the rubbing kind that Kindermann used to wipe Sly clean when he first got here. But also of a far more metallic, piercing aroma.  
The 'wet paint' is blood.

Before she can shake it off and get herself clean, the sound of the door slowly opening again catches her ear. She bounds closer, hoping that Nadel's taken pity on her and decided to get her an easier route to the Holder and whatever he's got.  
A forlorn hope - it's not Nadel. It's not even the same part of the asylum she left. It's a grey light shining on someone else coming through the doorway. The figure is very tall, almost too much so, and thin too; that's all she can tell of it from underneath its brown hooded cloak, face obscured. _Mebbe it's Dr Wood. That's whit gettin' an Object does t' ye, makes ye human,_ she thinks, a half-joke.

The door slams shut and all is dark again. Maybe it's heard her thoughts - crud, she hopes not - because instantly it squishes up against her, like it teleported across the room. The more dangerous scent takes over the other one, and she can feel giant lumps, bony ones, fingers or maybe knees, poking at her from splayed front legs to rear. Her back's against the wall, the surface squelching between layers; disgusting.

_**I know you.** _

Its hiss right in her ear brings a thousand, no, two thousand feelings rushing along with it, discomforts and blisters and aches. The kicked part of her stings, breaks, splits apart, bleeds, infects and oozes pus. Her vision spins, blurs, brightens, dulls; her hearing buzzes, clogs, pops; she tastes bile, steaming ice, undercooked overcooked flesh. Eyes of all kinds stare at her, strip her bare, undo the zip, go in, scratch at her insides, organs; a foul creature shakes and snarls and bursts out of the stuffed starvation. She knows, doesn't fear or worry but knows for certain, that everyone she knows is sick, has forgotten about her, ignores her, mocks her, spits and walks on her grave; that Dub mourns her, doesn't, hates her, has never liked her, never loved her, is stamping on her heart and the memories they've made; that she is powerless to stop any of it.

 _NO!_ She closes her eyes tightly, despite the sleep-dust and the pins and needles that have settled there to sew them up shut, and tries to pull herself together. She tries to rebuff each and every horror that's snuck up on her, stave them off. She has to be optimistic, the strong toy she might have been once.  
Her wound is **not** spilling crimson purple pinkish guts, tied to each other with two swollen and gushing intestines. Her skin is **not** burning and melting away and pooling on the floor like candle wax, leaving bloodshot eyes floating in a charred skull. She does **not** have a beast in her stomach ready to chew on her and pass her through false memories and phantom teeth. She is **not** going to die.  
 _No guts, no burnin', no beastie, no dyin'._ No matter how vivid the images are, no matter how real they seem, she has to trust they aren't. It becomes a chant in her head, ever faster, blurring together, reaching a fever pitch. _No guts no burn no beast no die no guts no burn no beast no die no hate!_ No hate, none, they don't hate her. They want her back. They want her to beat this.  
Dub wants her to survive.

But even when she feels that the suffering is beginning to fade away at last, she can't shake the idea that the others are hurting too. Others, so many others, even some in this room, people that have come before her. Hers is not the only torment.  
She opens her eyes again and stares up at the creature, hoping it can't feel her selfishness in her spirit. How long has it been since it first spoke? A stab in and of itself, a loss of time, of awareness.

She asks, unsteadily, "w-why ur they in p-pain?"  
No pain is for no reason, right?

It looks down, and although the room is bitterly black, she can still sense it is tossing its answer over in its head, just to make things all the worse.  
When it is done drawing it out, it speaks again, the words pulsing through her body as before. **_I will hold you here for all time,_** it taunts, _**and every night, I will mutilate you, rape you, and murder you.**_

And that very second is when the knife goes through her.  
Knife, ha. It's like none she's ever seen. No knife is this long and thick, this spiky and garroted, this excruciating piercing up her middle, from where she was kicked to right in front of her, millimeters from her face, tufts of white and cream and brown fur on the sharp and scratchy end.

Her throat drags out a scream.

The grip of and on the blade tightens, if that's even possible, and somehow it feels like more in an instant, a million knives inside one. They move upwards and downwards and sidewards in any and all direction with a single swoop, against her taut form and cutting it all up, apart, sending her flying every which way.  
And yet she does not black out. By some non-miracle she is awake to feel every slice land with a thud, every string of nerves stretch to beyond its limit. The thumps of her heart, the humiliation she's faced in the past, every minor pain, even the emotion overload just minutes ago pales compared to this.  
Maybe that's the point.  
The swords strike again, reform and chop and carve, bit by bit, petalling out. Fierce. Gratuitous.

No. She is not going to die.  
That would be too kind of a mercy for this true, undiluted agony.

***

**What, Pray Tell, Were You Hoping For, Dolly? What Did You Expect? Compassion?**  
 **All Seekers Are Destined To Succeed, Fail Or Die. Your Fate Was Sealed From The Start.**  
 **But No Matter. There Was One, Many, Before You. There Will Be Four, Many, After.**

**Unite Them All. Knives, Objects, Seekers, Holders. Together, Together Again.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of all of the holders for all of the patients, I had the hardest time picking one for Dolly. Even when in the process of writing, I was torn between giving her the Holder of Agony or Holder of the Red. On one hand, "creatively inhuman and meticulously soulless baroque tortures"; on the other hand, spoiler-related needle irony. I ultimately ended up going for Agony simply so I could flex my descriptive muscle, as hopefully shown above.
> 
> In the first edition of this chapter, the Holder spoke in Zalgo. But I do want an accurate word count this time around.
> 
> This chapter was originally written and published on October 17th 2012.


	4. Sliced Rainbow

Sly has the knowledge and he isn't fine anymore.

He was, at first. When he took Tail to the door and saw the man in the fancy shirt fall in and out and Dr Wood sat him down and told him about the things and the effects they have, he was excited, if anything! It sounded like a grand adventure in a really thick book or movie, and even now he can't truly shake the image of everyone dressed up as pirates with eyepatches all along them to look for gold and grails and anticipations.  
Dolly telling him that it was not so much about the grand adventure as it was about 'possibly saving or destroying the world as they know it probably the latter if you don't take this seriously' (Dolly can say a lot of words) made him slightly less okay with this. Saving the world can be an even bigger fun time than pirate hunting, but making the world go away isn't so good. If everything's gone, they won't have any place to live.

And now that both bird and sheep have gone away themselves and they haven't come back with a thing, the knowledge has gone mushy and brown without actually rotting away. He can taste the rancidness when he thinks about it, scorching his tongue. The good thing to do, then, is to **not** do that, but it's all over his head and the place and he can't stop.  
Is it a grand adventure when toys don't come back from it? Because it's sounding more and more like a scary wizard story instead, and Sly might like wizards when he hears their words, but he doesn't like to be scared. Who does?

The other three are scared too, or at least they look so. Every time someone goes, Lilo shuffles himself closer to the door, and is about a throw away from it now; Dub's sitting where Dolly used to eat the inside grass; and Kroko hasn't moved from his blanket in the corner at all, looking out at everyone around and the spaces where everyone gone were.  
Kroko's not fine a lot of the time, but he's worse now than he's ever been over here. So his is also the only one he might be able to do something about. Lilo doesn't talk and listen, and Dub does, just not to him.

Sly slides over to the crocodile to get him out of the blue. "[Are you okay?]" he checks, just to make sure.  
He shakes his head, of course. He's not sure why he thought he'd do or say or feel anything else; that'd be silly. But hopes are nice while they last.  
"[Are you still scared about the things?]"  
A squeak this time: "[Very.]"  
The sometimes-other-snake with no eyes stretches out to him, tickling him on the nose. "[Would you like to talk to Tail? That might make you smile.]"  
"[No, I don't think so. But thanks.]"

Tail goes away, and it's quiet all of a sudden.  
At least the two of them can still be near each other. In a part of life where rooms and doors split toys and people off from each other and lock them out so they can't come back, with cures or therapists or anything else, this is something that the green-pink and the green-red-aqua-ochre-all-of-them reptiles can be proud of. Especially Kroko: when he heard that the bowler-hat-man had to go away and become someone else, he fled straight back into the box, and it took two weeks before any of them saw him again, so his being out is great at the minute.

It's not until he spots his still droopy face that Sly realizes two problems. One: Kroko either doesn't know what he's thinking or doesn't believe it. Two: he isn't doing a very good job at happiness for either of them.  
He takes a different path by making an admission. "[If it helps any, and I dunno if it does, I'm scared about the things too. I know I'm s'posed to be excited because of the brooms and stuff, but I'm scared more than that. Like, the more we all leave, the more I get it, and if they don't come back it'll be--]"

What he just said triggers something in the other; he becomes smaller on the pillow, more tensed up, and loudly interrupts. "[Don't say that! They're gonna come back.]"  
"Ja ja, [but this is if they don't.]"  
"[There's no if, they will. Dr Wood said so, and he's the one in charge, so he's got to be right.]"

"[...Huh? Did he?]"  
Sly has problems with his memory sometimes, with holes sucking up what he needs to know before he's meant to know it, but he runs through what he's got of what's happened so far. _[Tail finds the glow shirt, Wood talks about the things, I get yelled at for telling him to get one, he goes to get one, Dolly runs away after shouting at Dub some more...]_  
"[Um, Kroko, not to be down,]" he says when he's finished, "[but I don't think Dr Wood said anything for it. That he's coming. He said - ]" a ringing addendum in the back of the head - "[he said we could go if he didn't, but that's not an it. So like I was worrying, if they don't--]"

"[But they ARE coming back!]" Kroko must be upset, because he pushes the blanket away as he insists it; it flips over a few times before stopping on its side. "[It's just they're not back **yet**. There's a difference, you know. Getting Objects might take a long time for them, for any of us, cus we're so small, and we have to walk further and higher up and go through much worse.]"  
Both Sly and Tail flinch at this cut into their self esteem. "[I'm not small!]" cries one of them.  
"[And if it does, it means we can't stop waiting for them until we know they are or aren't. We've been doing that for someone to help Nurse Nadel for a while, and we've gotta do it for this too, or else people will think you're giving up though you tell them you need to stay right here, and then they'll take you away and ignore you and it'll end up you can't see Gisbert again either way, Seeker or not.]"

"[...Uhhh, I never saw a Gisbert in the first place?]"

The other's eyes go really big really fast, and his breath is shallow. He doesn't say anything else, only scuttles over to where he threw his turquoise and lands on it, sinking all the way down until it's covering him.

Sly _really_ isn't helping with this whole not-make-anyone-sad business. He tries one more time to talk it better. "[Kroko?]" he calls to him. "[Is it something I said? Or something Gisbert said? Who is a Gisbert?]"  
There's no response.  
 _[Okay, new ideas, um, um...]_ "[Look, I'm gonna cheer you up one way or two. I'll go check for Wood and Dolly if it's easier? Say nothing for yes, say no for no.]" What comes out is most definitely the former, so he adds, "[Okay, I'm going now. If they're in the hall I'll let you know, if not... Same, I guess.]" And off he goes.

"[...Please try to be careful,]" he hears when he's halfway through. "[I want you to come back too.]"  
"[I'll be fine! I'm just going out then in if I can't see. I'm not gonna talk to the lady. Dunno what I'd say if I did.]"

***

"[Uh - the - the Holder of Color please.]"

...Well, in his defense, he'd got out and they weren't there no matter how much he looked, and then he was gonna return but he got distracted by the shifting of trees outside, of how the black bits coming out of them slipped through the door and onto the yellow blue wallpaper and how inexplicably bright everything was for such a terror day, for one full of Holders and stuff and danger crawling from the corners on long thin legs, and then the nurse was loud at the desk and she asked him if he was okay with brown eyes big and round, and it was on his mind, and it'd be rude if he didn't say **something** , so he has.  
Kroko's gonna be mad at him, but he'll try his best not to make it worse.

He's pulled out of it with the sight of an open hand stretched towards his face, the white-clad woman bopping in front of him and giving him a soft smile, like a new friend. Her nails look lovely now, with navy outsides and crimson stars in the middle. The ends of them are super pointy, and there's five per shape, one per finger, five of them, double that on the other, so many on the ends of a palm.  
A palm he's forgotten what to do with. He hazards a guess that she wants him to be polite again, so Tail decides to wrap itself around it and shake it to introduce himself. It curls around at least twice.  
Before either can say "[how do you do]", she hoists the pair up and moves quickly through a few doors, leaving his head dangling the wrong way down. Because he's not small at all and full of patches, his head sometimes skims the floor for a second or two before rising, but nothing gets slammed in his face like usual. That's a plus.

Instead of being pulled through the fifth door, he's let go outside it, and he tumbles into a spiral at its bottom. Nothing's coming out of the gap between ground and solid, no light or sound or anything, which is kind of startling. He doesn't even know where he is, as looking around doesn't tell him anything except that the nurse wants him to go in, gesturing to its sudden opening, and part of him is holding him back from doing it.  
He wants to think something instead of telling it to her, but it comes out anyway: "[Hey, you reckon if I explore a bit first, I can find Wood and Dolly and get the things from them?]"  
She doesn't give him an answer, just pointing the same way.  
"[Cus, I mean, it's kinda big important that we **all** get back with them, or no one's gonna win, you know? What's the point of a wizard pirate adventure if no one wins it? That's what wizard pirates are _for_ \--]"

There's a low rumbling from the belly of the earth now, bass-driven and intense. When he looks at her again, her eyes look tight, and the pretty nails are turning into a dark grey, into dust, floating into the sky, and it feels, almost sounds, like underneath him is saying _[go in if you know what's good for you]_ against his skin.  
"[Yeesh, fine, fine,]" he mutters, sliding over the join and into his fate. "[I can take a hint.]"

The cell's a lot lighter on the inside once the door's shut, in comparison to whatever really really dark aura looks like it's lying under a square in the floor. At the top of it, about as long as him, he guesses, are two little boys that don't add any hues to a place already without them. One's in a white rosebud dress long enough to get married in or for him to stick his head under it, and the other's in a suit that makes him picture waddling penguins; but they both don't have anything else to make them look alive. Their short and neck-length hair's all dull, just pencil lines, and so are their faces, the necks going into the clothes. They look like ghosts, like the memories that his head takes away, like...

Eventually he settles on a word for them. "[You look gone.]"  
They hold out all four of their hands towards him, not replying. (Why doesn't anybody want to talk to him today?) One per person looks like they ought to have gloves on, though he's not sure he can trust himself to tell which one is which.  
Tail sneaks up on him, bunching up, and from how it's moving, he's got to be kind again. "[Good thinking, Tail. You take the white, I'll take the black.]" And he does just that, placing his head in the left most fingers, while his partner lands on the right--

right --

What the pair feel once it touches that hand, the joy and glee and overwhelming need of it, only lasts a second. That's not nearly enough time for any mind to get all the details, let alone his. But what sticks out in that painfully short time is how _right_ it is. Rainforests, vibrant plants, lush with birds and beasts and bugs, him amongst them, swirling all over the place, into cool refreshing water and out again, the sun being out to warm his skin with the fish, and nothing to worry about ever again, no one ignoring him, and the bliss and magic and...

and he doesn't know. That's all he gets of it before the child in white takes his hand away, using the other one to hold him up instead. Compared to it, everything's even blacker and more horrible now, more frightening, absolutely not good. He reaches out for it all he can, but it's pulled far out of reach, high up, and suit-boy won't let go.

"[C'mon, not fair, give it back,]" he wails.  
The two glance at each other, and nod, giggling in a way that hurts his ears. Down and up the group goes, something pulled up to reveal a hole and some stairs that wind down deeper than he's ever seen. With Sly still wriggling to try and get the pleasure back, caught between them like a stretch rope, they climb inside to start their journey.

It's some way down, maybe fifty steps, that he talks to them again about the amazement, since asking for it and force aren't working yet. "[What was that in the hand?]"  
 **[Our holiday home,]** they say in stereo, as though they're feeling it all the time. **[Our tropical beauty, blown up to cover a whole slice of the world. When Miss doesn't need us here, we can visit it whenever we like. We can feed the animals; they eat from our hands without biting and purr when we stroke them ever so perfectly. When we are done with you, we simply will ourselves to it, and there we are, in the heart of the paradise. Are you jealous?]**  
"[Uh-huh!]" He nods super hard, trying to get longer still so he can go there too.

 **[Of course, our Garden of Eden is simply that, a garden. Our real gem is the mansion. As tall as a mountain, as wide as a gulf, filled to the brim with riches your humans could only pretend to attain. Each room is painted differently, and there's a lot of rooms for us to play in and hide. The Red Room, Orange, Purple, Blue, Cinnamon Brown, Perdiot... How fitting that you seek Color, and yet the thing you came here for is so easily gotten, just by going home. Are you jealous, small one?]**  
He stretches even more. He hopes he's not gonna break something. "[Yup, and you're - not - helping the jealous.]"

 **[How easily angered you are... We haven't even touched on our fountains yet. A whole floor just for them, spewing hot chocolate and lemonade and all manner of delicious drinks that we can sip on until we're sated. And our astronomy chambers...! How wonderful it is to tear off the roof, lie underneath our telescopes - state of the art, of course - and simply gaze at the stars, turning them into meaningless shapes for no one's fun but our own. Are you jea--]**  
"[YES I'M JEALOUS.]"

Sly's honestly getting a mix of cross and concerned now. The way down's getting thinner, which means he's getting squashed, but still the boy to his right (so very very right) won't let him get the good stuff back, just holding it away, and to cap it they're taunting him with pirate treasure he'd have no use for if he had any but would be awesome to get all the same. And he hasn't even seen the Holder of the thing yet... Is he ever? Or are they just gonna speak to him forever and not let him have it?

**[We so wish that Miss can come over to our home and spend time in its lush carpets, its views, its opulence. But she's so busy with her job that she can't leave. She is jealous too, although she doesn't say so. She doesn't say anything to us. She has no need for words, for she's too beautiful for it. Those who watch her from the glass floor, those who have failed, can see that for themselves. ...And yet she chose us to take you to her, to be among her helpers. Are you jealous?]**

He freezes. Okay, he's definitely getting out of here.  
"[Yeah, but, hey, it's nice being here with you, but,]" he sputters, "[I really need to get back or everyone will worry, and I don't think you're going to give anything to me at all, so. I've gotta go!]"  
With a massive pop, he pulls free from the boys in the suit and the dress at last, and shoots off the way he came as quickly as he can. It's gotten pitch black by now, so he bumps into the edges a lot, but his body guides him up. Surprisingly, it's the only thing he can still see, no sign of anybody chasing him...

...then an invisible one of them gets his neck in a choke hold, crushing him, lifting him.  
"[H-how'd-y-]" he would say if he could talk right now, but he can't, and he spins off key somehow, and then he's being thrown off the side of the stairs.

The wind cuts at him as he tumbles. Nothing's whistling that could be it, but he _feels_ it, slicing through every scrap of fabric that holds him together, more and more. There's a twinge at the very end of him, and the red tip is pulled clean off, a small thin trail behind it in large circles, until he can't even find Tail. It's like he's coming totally undone, thread by thread by thread by -

He never sees another colour again.

***

**Tsk Tsk. You Got Greedy, Sly. That's Your Trouble.**   
**It's Not Enough To Endure No Pain, Compared To Those You Followed... You Left Behind. Not Many Seekers Have The Privilege You Did. Especially Our Survivors.**   
**But You Had To Push Your Luck. To Hope They Take Pity On You. And Now Look At You. Or What Remains.**

**Hopes Are Nice While They Last, But Are All For Naught In The End. This Will Be Clear Ere The Objects Shall Meet.**


	5. Sky Merely Reflects Sea

The number of cuddly toys in the patient lounge is getting smaller and smaller, the blots of shade that replace them changing ever more across the floor in their loping monstrous forms. Kroko, witness to the slow and synchronized swapping out, remains in his corner of the room and fights, both with his blanket and with himself.  
 _[I've got to go find Gisbert. I've got to help the others like I said I would. ...But I don't wanna leave and be in danger.]_  
The two sides of him, fearful in different senses, war it out. It'd be easier for him to bear, were one dominating the other. But they aren't that merciful; instead, they clash in the middle, running from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail, threatening to split him in exactly equal halves.  
 _[If I leave, I might not come back before they do, and then Sly will be right all along. ...But Gisbert's still out there.]_

Gisbert. Hazardous human, as most are. Loyal friend, one in a hundred thousand. Seeker.

How many times has he thought the name alone, not the titles that follow it, in the past few hours? Probably fifty, only once out loud. He's making up for lost opportunities, having it bound and rebound in him so often like a bird clattering at the edges of its cage in search of an out; he's sure he hadn't heard it in weeks, months even.  
He's always had trouble remembering what the owners he's been shipped to and from over the ages were called, and in what order they come. Was he the very first, the one who got him out of the original box before he found the thinner one? Or was this later? Did he like this human more or less? Watchful Eyes and circumstances have worn the memories away, with only Dr Wood's earlier words, and the proof in the visitor's arrival and quick vanishing, bringing them back.  
Or, at least, what they could. A lot's happened since then, he knows that much.

 _[That guy could have **been** Gisbert for all I know,]_ he tells himself, trying to find a solution to the battle at hand. _[If he was, I really should... but then what if he wasn't and I go to find something I can't handle? But then if he was and he's expecting me - if he hasn't given up on me after They made - and the last time was - if - ]_  
He lets out a groan and goes back under the blanket, getting nowhere.

Having put up a shield to hide from the others, including the single glare of the sun, he is then beset by what he can't flee from. Strife, resumed; doubt, never having stopped; echoes of the past, rising and falling in volume and significance.  
There's a shadow in one, towering above, tying long glowing strings into a ball the size of his own eye. Mutterings, though he couldn't, can't, tell what of. A dripping of something thicker and terrifying.  
An invisible tossing and turning in the second, the lack of sight made up for in presence and, suddenly, voice. _"[That post wasn't kidding, Kroko; I'm remembering too much. The texture of the fish sandwich I had at Reusenhaus ten years ago yesterday. The name of the waitress. What she said to me. "The ability to forget is the true token of greatness". Maybe she had the right of it.]"_  
In a third, an extended hand from a splayed form, rolling about a red rubber ball in front of him. Something that might or might not have been a joke. _"[The kids haven't stopped counting, little guy. They're up to million-and-fifty-five now. How high do you reckon they'll get? A zillion?]"_ The betrayal of a hitch in the laughter.

The last moment he's sure they shared is clearer to him, for he's revisited it again and again today. He's had no choice.  
There's the crinkle of a rucksack hauled onto a weakened back, heavy with all the Objects he had to carry. A pressure just behind his head as he pet him goodbye, instructing him to [wait for him, and take care of himself], something he thinks he said every time. And, just before the end, the remnants of his own mixed worry and curiosity.  
 _"[Wait, Gisbert - which one are you gonna get now? You never said.]"_  
 _"[I dunno. The Grail, the Sky... I suppose I'll see when we get there.]"_

After that, there's nothing left. Except, from today, the dual renewed urgencies to either find what became of him... or survive.

He straightens out under his self-made canopy, lets loose a breath too loud for him, and tries one more time to pick a side. _[I'm scared to go find Gisbert because of the danger. But what, really, will I lose if I do?]_  
His protection from the things that were trying to get them both long before they even found the Holders. His health, his happiness, maybe even his life. His friends - but from what Sly has insisted and the fact that he hasn't seen him for a while, some of them are already lost, so they can't count.

 _[Okay,]_ he amends sadly, _[then what will I lose if I stay here, where no one can hurt me?]_  
His last chance to see Gisbert again. The bravery he's been yelled at for not having for the longest time. The show of it when he threw them all into this. The bits of his mind that will be stuck on this, and the shared hopes they made, forever.

And when it comes to it - being safe versus being strong, the fear of falling off the edge of the world versus the odds, however low, of soaring up - which is the one he'd be more pressed to keep?

... When he's done with all that listing and compartmentalizing of things little and big, he emerges from the pillow for one last time and makes the inevitable decision.  
Still, he wouldn't be Kroko without finding some way to reconcile the two extremes, at ceasefire now that one has fallen. As he scuttles to the door to leave much of it behind, he whispers to Lilo, "[If Dub comes after me, don't let him leave, okay?]" He waits for the understanding nod before he steps through to meet the remaining human. Now, at least, the final two will be safe.

Her nails are starting to get chipped and long. She's attacking them with one of those grainy files, the tint of his butterfly-filled belly, as he enters.  
"[Hi, Nurse Nadel. Do you feel better now?]" he ventures, approaching her.  
"[Good afternoon, Kroko. Better than what? I've been fine all day.]"  
Her confused dismissal doesn't invite him to clarify about how cold and still she turned, so he just says, "[Never mind. If it's not too much trouble, can you take me to see someone?]"  
"[It depends on who.]"

He's about to prepare for the same thing the tall-almost-too-much-so man did, but then he falters. Dr Wood had been right - only one can go at a time. If he could do so in the first place, that means Gisbert's probably long left it. So he starts again with his back-up plan. He's always wanted to touch the clouds anyway.  
"[Can I see the Holder of the Sky please?]"

Then, as before, nothing.

***

Usually, when Kroko wakes up in the mornings, it's his hearing that comes back first. It's been like that for a long time. The rustling of toys in the rooms around him and clocks ticking and distant traffic - they all make him feel comfortable, make him smile.  
So he's more alarmed, slowly stirring from his abrupt sleep, by it **not** doing this.

The 'nothing' that has seeped through both recollection and request clearly means business. It persists in the tiny hollows of his ears, unnaturally. It invades some of the other senses that gradually return to him, as he shifts, aching, on what feels like - well - what doesn't even feel, but holds him up all the same.  
Fortunately (or not), nothing is not everything here. He's still breathing, which is a comfort. Sensation returns to his back, the rest of him, and that too stays to peck and prinkle. Is someone sitting on top of him to keep him trapped? If they are, he'd like them to stop, and he opens his eyes to find them and say so -

\- and he sees no human, no Eyes or hands, just a rushing flood of water coming at him in its most cutting form at highest speeds from greatest heights from all directions, and in an instant it hits him how much of an awful mistake he's made.

 _[WATER!!]_ he wants to scream, and in his mind that pulls his body near and fetal and tight to it he does. _[Water water so much of it too much get away get off!!]_ No actual sound comes out from any of this except a fraction of whimpering, still the second loudest thing in the whole room. He can't hear it or anything at all but he can see it he can sense it it can drench and churn and bog he's getting soaking wet from its lashing like whip cracks through him and everywhere and it surrounds him too close to escape and too far to run and there's no hope here, no people, no one to get him out, and he can't get out himself, it's too dark and cold and full and he's shaking from it and he came here to be brave but he's _so so frightened_.  
When the assault has struck him for the longest minute that has ever sunken in, part of the fear breaks off, such as it can with it overtaking him, stunning him, and turns into scolding. Why didn't he expect this? Rain comes from the sky. One asks for the Holder of the Sky, one gets all that being up there entails and more besides. Sly isn't here but even he could have told him that, silly as he is, as they both are, he's stupid stupid **stupid!**  
He lets it. Hearing something else doesn't make the torrential terror go away, but it's nice to pretend he's not alone to face it all the same. If he does it hard enough, maybe it won't even be there and he'll be back in the lounge with the others or with Gisbert or anywhere he's ever called home. Even the box, with its door to the enemies he's made, would be better right now.

He wishes as hard and as small as he can be. _[Please let me go, I want to go home. I don't need the Sky. The Holder can keep it. Please let me go home.]_

There's no one to grant it.

Or there wasn't. Through the gauze of what strikes him down, beyond his eyelids, they seem to simply appear. People, masses of them, in a giant crowd, slice through the mist, hulking and unmistakeable even in their black cloaks. Their features all look different from what he can tell, but mean nothing to him right now. They can't save him from this. Or they can, but they have no interest in doing so.  
Only now is he able to move, but more out of self-preservation from the spike-clad feet nearly treading on his tail than anything else. More of the storm lands on him as he moves, sending shocks flaring through the mind, but the danger is twice-fold now, and he'll have to go for one to escape another; that's what got him here in the first place, isn't it? He darts through the approaching army, going against their grain, the water still too present for him to speak.  
He doesn't know what he's looking for, not exactly. He knows there's something to find, though, and until there's something or someone to come across to help him on his way, that's enough.

No one looks at him, this flitting piteous creature. They continue to march in gridlock, seeking unity in every silent step. But there are those who walk to a different beat, as there are in all the places he's been in his short, mostly-smudged-out life, and it's with a start that he trips, tumbles, over the shoes of one of them. The rain pelting on the lesser-hurt stomach doesn't help.  
For the second he's flat on the ground, he manages to get a good look at the face of the one in question for the first time. It looks the same as most faces would, eyes and nose and mouth in the right place, staring right ahead at what doesn't await. Yet... as it moves, there's something about it. Something warm, achingly familiar, but noticeably squished down by all that happens here...

...that's not... it can't be. Can it?  
"[ _Gisbert?_ ]"

By the time his exclamation makes it out, the man slotting so simply into place in him has passed over. Kroko immediately follows back the way he came, not so fast as to be splashed, not even now, but as quickly as he can. This **has** to be Gisbert. Yeah, he looks a little sad and hurt right now but if he recognizes him they can both get out of here and hide from Them, right?  
"[Gisbert?]" He calls again. "[Gisbert, I'm - ow - I'm down here, I'm over here, Gisbert! It's me, Kroko! I came here to get you and help you get what you came here to get and please, Gisbert, _look_ at me,]" he cries, to no avail. In this plane with no ground and a sobbing ceiling, no one seems to hear him, let alone his ex-owner, and his own voice is far too strong against himself. He needs to hear another, he needs him to look, please let him look.  
He does not, merely continuing on his trail, one of many rusting metal soldiers in a broken music box.  
"[Come on, Gisbert, we have to get out so we can go home!]" shouts the crocodile again, leaping up as best as he can onto him, his deterrent spraying him but he doesn't care, he just has to get Gisbert by the bare hand and go--

As soon as the cloth makes contact with skin, all movement stops. What was once mere lines and lost heat now gains a deafening roar to back it up. That and the renewed awareness of the rain makes him flinch, curl around the wrist, shut all things up.

Perhaps it's for the best that he does that. After all, it means that he can't see the beings of darkness descend upon him until it's too late.

***

**Kroko. Follower Of Footsteps. Hypocrite To Your Element. And, For The Barest Of Moments: Seeker.**   
**The Skeptical Would Say That, No Matter Your Path, You Wouldn't Have Had A Chance. You Were Too Tied Up In This To Escape, But Knew Too Much To Survive, With Mind Intact Or Otherwise.**   
**Do I Agree? It Matters Not. You Are Among The Holder's Ranks Now. These Things, And Water, Cannot Bother You Anymore.**

**Mustn't Dwell, Mustn't Dwell. There Are Many Who Wished, Still Wish, To Go Home As Fervently As You Did. I Would Know.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those curious: Gisbert references the Holders of the Finale, the Ego, and the Game. And since I forgot to clarify this in the notes for Chapter 1, the Seeker of the Grail that kickstarted this whole thing off has already bested the Holders of Confusion (and carries the Beast's Resolve), Treachery, and (as shown in his unchanged clothes) Sleep. Both of them also took on the Holder of the End to start their journeys, but only the Grail seeker followed that up with Beginning and Eternity; Gisbert wanted to leave Beginning to, well, the end. He was among the very few lucky ones, in that he actually managed to make headway in the collective quest before making a mistake and losing all he had gained. Where the Grail guy ended up, you can figure out on your own.


	6. The Chase

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
> This chapter has been given a severe warning stamp. **This means that out of all the distressing and potentially triggering chapters we've had so far, this one is particularly so.** Think Dolly's agony, only diluted and actually happening. In this instance, the warning is for character death by asphyxiation, with the symptoms detailed thereof, as well as explicit eye trauma and sensory loss. Read at your own risk.

Dub's never pre-ambled over making decisions. Never never. The time for doubts and fears and regrets is later, or in this case, during the things that happen before having to make it in the first place; and he's had enough of all three of those licking at his spine in the past couple of whatevers to last a lifetime. So deciding to get out there and do whatever Dolly was talking about? Easy. Making his way to the hurdle between worlds? Easiest.  
It's when Lilo, seeing him coming, steps in front of the door and presses his back against it to make it stick shut that things and beings get difficult.

Both of them are small, he thinks quickly, so it should be easy enough to just walk around him. But when he shifts to the side, the hippo follows him, no matter how fast he tries to dart back and through. He would make it the third time if one doesn't accidentally run smack into the other's side, knocking each of them back to the ground. And even then, it's not as long an opening as he hopes before the path is again blocked, so he can't take advantage of it by the time he's up.

Right. New tactic. "Okay, that was - fun and all," he lies, "but can I get through now please?"  
Perhaps it's because he doesn't wait for an answer to that that Lilo is rougher on him now, actually _pushing_ him away from his fate.  
"No, seriously, can I--" It happens again. "Why won't you--?" A third. "Will you let me--?!" A futile, frustrating fourth. " **Lilo!!** "  
He's still not budging.

He purses his mouth and, albeit with a lot of effort, forces himself to not let his legs run before it this time. "What is your _deal_ right now? You don't even know I'm getting into this whole Holder business yet, do you? You can't stop me for no reason."  
Which is true enough; but the averted stare and further spreading along its surface makes him realize he just straight up admitted what he's doing.  
"...Alright," he sighs, "trying that again. You can't stop me for the same reason everyone else has sodded off. What's the difference between letting, say, Dolly out or letting me out? What told you you could decide one and not the other? ...Well, besides Wood not bei-- you know what I mean."  
A thought seems to occur to him, as the hippo breaks off to let the tiniest trickle of light through the door, and peers through the gap. His hand still rests on the gloss, and his head cocks slightly, tentatively. Dub thinks he's getting the message: he's trying to protect him from what's out there.

"Oh yeah, cus you've done _such a great job_ at saving us so far!!" His outburst rebounds from corner to corner, ceiling to floor, of the huge blatant stretch of nothing and no-one surrounding the pair. "You let _them_ wander off into getting themselves killed or worse no problem! You let Wood start off this whole thing, you let Dolly go to god knows where and I may never see her again anyway, but suddenly you put on the 'gotta save you' act cus it's me doing it?! What do they have that's worth getting killed that it... that I don't...?"  
He trails off, losing all steam and impetus to shout at him. The other's tensing around the shoulders, still looking away. It wouldn't be fair.

"...Ugh, I'm sorry. This whole situation, it's. It's got me wound up something awful. Didn't mean to take it out on you." He steadies his neck, the nerves on the back of it flaring, with an uneasy glove while half-considering his next words. "I sorta get where you're coming from. You didn't know he wasn't gonna come back, and now that more and more are... you don't wanna be alone, do you?"  
He takes the lack of rebuttal as a no.  
"Well, nor do I. No one does, I think. Yet people and things keep showing up to get me alone. ... Dolly's not coming back. Much as I hope she will, she's not." The hand instinctively moves again, rests above his heart. "Nor's Wood, nor are the other two. Kindermann's gone. We're not getting that therapist they keep talking about. And..."  
The unfinished sentence grates at the back of his throat, almost on his tongue. He holds back that bile. That's **not** true. He will. He has to. ...Hasn't he?  
"And. And Max won't be back for a while," he compromises. "So, if they're not getting here on their own, I've gotta go find them. And that means going to the Holders. Maybe get a small Object first, just to warm me up. Then with any luck, when I'm done with mine, I can run into the rest of them, get them back here. Then I can find Max, go home, pick up this where I left off. But I have to go out there first. And you're not helping either of us by trying to stop me. Got it?"

Once more, no reply. Just staring down the path most taken.  
"Oi - do you get it, Lilo?"  
This, of all things, gets him to look back, confusion crossing his face but little else. The reason hits him, his now clenching fists, like a brick. Lilo doesn't know English. He didn't get a single bit of that. He's wasted words. Wasted precious time.

"...Pah." He's vaguely aware he's trembling now. "What am I talking to **you** for?"  
And with all of his renewed frustration poured into shoving Lilo aside, Dub's finally through the door.

Nadel's looking at him with disapproving eyes and no blue left on the nails as he rushes to the desk. "Dub, why were you shouting at--?"  
"Cut the crap, lady. Holder of - of - " Ack, he didn't actually think this part through. _Holder of, uh, what kind of things did she say would-?_ "Holder of Speed." _Yeah, sounds about right._

At least he hopes it does. But the fact that she's just sort of staring at him now, as motionless as when the tall man did the same thing, doesn't exactly boost his confidence.  
"...Uh, hello? Holder of Speed," he tries again, but still nothing from her. Nothing from anywhere. "...C'mon, I'm really not in the mood for this. Just take me to the Hold--"

His plea is broken with an all-consuming sound. A giggle, from all over the place and from nowhere at the same time. When it's gone, silence reigns, startling and cold to the heart, not even a thrum of air conditioning or scuffling of shoes on ground.  
He's about to ask yet again when it does it for him, this time coming from a specific direction. He moves towards it, more slowly than he would like, and it gets louder as he approaches, then nearly trips up on, the foot of a flight of stairs. Winded, he gazes up to its top end, reaching into what's almost a thick grey sky except indoors. He's been told time and time again never to go up there. Can he break the rules just to go looking for someone or something?  
Someone's voice floats into his head - _I won't leave - I promise I'll come back_ \- in either Scottish or Mancunian tones, he can't place which. Either way, it steels him. Yes, he can. So much else has been broken already.

The fall must have taken more out of him than he thought, because by the time he does scramble over the last step, his breath has grown short, and stairs don't normally give him trouble like this. He takes a few seconds to get it back, looking around where he's ended up as he does. It's a murky hall, much like below, but a lot longer and with far more rooms attached to its sides like legs. The light's patchy, bursts of brightness from floating rectangles and those glaring green fire exit signs being the only sources, and it's starting to make his eyes hurt just looking at it.  
Abruptly, 'a few seconds' has become a minute, and he's still not recovered. A settling unsettling thought that he gives no time to do either. Okay, whatever, he can get it back on the run. Nothing he can't work through.  
It's oddly liberating, actually, being up here, speeding through a forbidden space. Slipping in and out of yellow and grey, hearing no one tell him off, no one able to catch up with him and put him in his place... it's a rush to the head. Literally.

At some point in his exploration, the sound of _something_ catches him off guard. He can't put a visual to it, even a vague action; it's just... there. Noise with no known source, first happening, then not. Another thing for him to track on top of the laughter, louder than it, overriding it...  
His feet are drawn to both, skidding on the unfamiliar ground in places. Is it just him, or is it getting harder to do so up here? He's just wondering if it's something to do with how high up he is, like the dizziness they get on mountaintops, when the formless blip coming again, closer through a layer of wood, tells him he's at the right place.  
Oddly enough, once he gets it open, what he finds doesn't have much in the way of form either. The space is as empty as the lounge would have been, but for a single rug in the centre of the floor... no, not a rug, though its edge curves like one, a perfect circle. Rugs aren't often picked apart in the middle or made of long, thin, white wisps of - is that _sunlight_? One stretches from one side of it to the next, rebounds as though in quicksand, and the noise seems like it's coming from it, but a lot faster than it's actually going.  
 _The heck **is** this?_

"You're it."  
"Gyah!!" He nearly jumps out of his skin, and is about to tell whoever spoke not to **do** that, but stops short on seeing who it is.  
Or rather, who it couldn't possibly be. After all, Max is back at home, how would he get up here? And so wide-eyed and innocent-looking to boot? No, it can't be. This could just be a little kid that happens to _look_ ever so exactly like Max, right down to the bobble hat... and yet, he's quite tall for a child, isn't he? Almost too much so, even.  
He wants to protest, to get confirmation of it, to say anything, but he can't quite find the words for them, and anyway not-Max is already pulling a ping pong ball out of his back jeans pocket. He wraps his tiny brown hand around it, moves it in a circle above the turtle once, twice, three times, then drops it. He has the sense to get out of the way before it can hit him on the shell.  
"You're it," the boy repeats, then takes off down the hall to become a speck in the distance, giggling all the while.

Okay. A game of Tag with a ping pong ball. That's something he can do. He should have this Object in no time. He takes a deep breath to aid his pursui--

No breath. No air coming in with the breath. Why isn't he breathing, why can't he breathe? Another one's taken, and another, but no change. One more, for longer than before, and only then does he feel like there's motion in what he thinks are his lungs. Dizziness overtakes him and he keels, nearly hitting his head on the ball or the floor, trying to get it even again. But it's unchanging from now. Long inhale, short exhale. Not enough in, too much out, and it's like molasses, it's not stirring him at all unless he breathes so slow, too slow, too little. _Oh god, what's happening?!_

No, he can't panic, he grips the ball himself, unexpectedly smooth, he **cannot panic**. If the world keeps acting up like this, it'll be that and fear that kills him. He just has to get to the kid and give it back. Then maybe this will go away. He can't think about the consequences if it doesn't.  
Though since his legs jerk out from underneath him as he starts again, he may have to.

In an odd way, oxygen deprivation is like a stitch in the side, the non-toy kind. It goes unnoticed, relatively, until it flares up and doubles one over, and then somehow its effects grow steadily worse until it is all the body knows. The only difference with Dub is that stopping does him no good, but makes the air all the more compressive when he resumes.  
It hardens, almost solidifies, against him; there is no such thing as running here. It muffles the clues he gets from the corners, the boy's voice humming tunelessly, sending him first one way then the opposite, spinning the room. Not that he can make it out very well. The more trouble it is to breathe in, the longer he has to do it, the louder he has to react to it. Gasp, pant gasp, pant gasp. The consistency of seawater and cornflour.  
At one point, his hands begin to tingle, painfully so, and he loses sensation and grip of the ball. It rolls away at the same speed it normally would, because of course it does. It takes a solid minute before he catches up to it, and by this time what he was following now comes from behind him.

Senses erode. He's long since lost track of time when it starts to hurt to move all over. Thousands of tiny needles seem to be jutting into him, draining hope to replace it with ice, but there are none, just the atmosphere. Once, he has to curl up in pain and struggle not to clasp his hands over his right eye, for it's been split across as easily as with a pair of scissors.  
It's getting tough to see even without this. Darkness seeps in the further in he goes, first at the edges, then throughout, splotching. What bits still pass through get cluttered sometimes with dancing spots and stars, from whirling worlds, from the scratches within and the song around...  
The gradual roar of deafness is a mercy in comparison. It means he can't hear himself choking.

It becomes a crawl towards the end. Everything. He's only keeping himself and the gift going with sheer dumb luck. Spikes run in and out, caught by the odd twitch. His mind swims.  
Then, at last, he makes out a beam of light. Vast and wide, from what he hopes is a window, and a silhouette underneath, overriding. Not-Max. It has to be, finally, finally.  
Relief eases his arms, his stomach, hindering him even now as he creeps into the sun. He doesn't say hi, or wonder. There are no words left.

Dub, without even bothering to get upright, feebly pushes the ball to his feet, praying that this will end things one way or another.

A shape of a hand scoops down, collects it. It all becomes one blot as his weary eye follows it. All begins to shake.  
Then something extends above him. The child moves it in a circle above the turtle, once, twice, three times, then drops it. It knocks him on the back, sending agony all through his centre, and bounces off to nowhere he can see.  
 _'You're it,'_ he thinks the boy repeats. Then the shadows fade.

 _Nooo...!_  
He has to start again. The loop will never end. He cannot tense at the thought, only numb from the neck down, only continue to grab broken breaths.  
Empty breaths. No more to take, no more to give. No more reason to fight, to cling, to persist, no nourishment for the act.  
He goes limp, frozen, on the ground. Sight vanishes. Sound disappears. Only his heart falters on in these final moments.

And soon, even that jolts... slows... slows...

***

**Stops.**

**And So The Last But One Doesn't Cross The Finish Line. At Least, Not The One You Were Aiming For.**   
**Strictly Speaking, You Were Supposed To Think Of Your First Great Failure, Wandering The Lonely Upstairs. But I Suppose You Were Saving That Up For The Nothingness That Will Meet You.**  
**Dwell On It There. Your Wasted Efforts, Wasted Words. Wasted Precious Time.**

**Meanwhile, I Have A Tale To Finish. Dead, Dying, Seekers, Innocents - Let Us See How Lilo Fares, Shall We?**


	7. He Who Laughs Last

Reality is changing. Lilo can feel it. He always does.

It's malleable enough outside, the cycle of addition and subtraction and birth and death. In here, though, it's sped up and expanded into things that should not shift. Creatures have gone into boxes and come out of boxes, which have then disappeared from matter. Clear skies have been followed by sudden rain, then a too bright sunstorm. The number of doors between here and Nadel has sometimes been two, sometimes one. Humans pack their bags and shove him aside and go, go, come, go; _toys_ go, never to return, except as recently forming memories in the back of his head.  
Constant, constant change.

But his **silence** has stayed all the while.

It has been with him for such a long time, nesting in his inner pit, breaking his teeth. At first, he'd hated it; then they'd thrown him here to fix it; then, when no one came, he'd learned to live with it. It shuts him up too often for others to bear, it's true, but at least it shatters no worlds, causes neither separation nor pain, as words would.  
Besides, it is his only company now that his five contemporaries have left. And it seems dead set on keeping it that way.

How does he know this? Because as he listens, indulges in one of the five under-stimulated senses, he picks up less and less. The rumblings of car engines have all but vanished already, but even the distant ones are shut off over time, when by rights it ought to be rush hour, given the clock. Speaking of which, its stalling staccato hands no longer click as they should beyond the first ten minutes after the turtle walked out. When there should be the grumble of the heating system turning on, the wind bending the trees outside the glass, and other small noises one doesn't ordinarily miss, there's emptiness instead. It has snuffed them out.

An idea occurs to him - how far does this extend? He leaves the exit and heads to the xylophone that Dolly discarded to surge them all into this solipsistic circumstance. Five strands of music-to-be lie on the wooden lines, all rearranged from earlier. One of them is loose, the longest. He grips it and shakes it about...  
Nothing happens. Not a sound. Visually, it rattles red, but that's it.  
Rattles - something else, internal this time. He knows his stowaway, how it works. Often, in moments of true pause, it ought to ring in his ears, like waves in a shell, buzzing incessantly. But even now, it doesn't. His ears have been stoppered while remaining quite clear, leaving room for the truth to seep into his soul.

All is not just quiet - all is the quietness itself. **He is it. Silence is him.** It always was.

The Holders and Seekers have made the two one. He's not certain how he knows, but it is so. It's their way of driving him out of this square box into one of their own design, one with no seeming beginning and no seeming end.  
...And, unable as he is to admit it, it works. Or is working now, hauling him to his feet and letting him stare at the way out. If nothing else, he needs someone to whom he can prove his revelation.

But how is he to find anyone specifically? As shown to him through the blockade six times today, he has to have a target in mind or else it won't work. He'll have to be creative if he's to get through with as much, if not more, ease as they.  
Fortunately, help is at hand in the form of the briefcase outside of the therapy room. It used to be Wood's. He rushes to it, clicks it open, tosses aside raven's claws that will be used nevermore, and tears out a piece of paper from a spare notebook. The pencil within is unsharpened, just his luck; so he abandons the mess and crosses the floor again to reach Nurse Nadel, with the intent of borrowing a pen instead.

She starts to say something as he leaves that room, but then her eyes catch his incomplete message. She relaxes then, and nods, as though she understands, though he's not sure why, yet. She comes out from behind the desk and takes first the slip from him, then his paw, and from this close she smells so strongly of nail polish remover as to make him feel sick.

They walk. Doors open and close without sound; shoes don't squeak on the tiles or concrete; the lights grow dimmer, flickering on occasion; and still they walk. No one talks. She makes to cough, sometimes, but he shakes his head and she subsides, forcing the clawed masquerades back into the walls.

Eventually, they reach the cell. It would be black were it not for the dim bare bulb; it's oddly homely, actually. Not something his mind is unused to. He slips inside, and stares at her pitying face through the netting as she slides it shut, locks it, then goes back the way she came.  
He has, in effect, exchanged one cage for another, he almost reflects. In both rooms, he is undistracted and alone.

**Alone with his silence.**

***

...No... This isn't quite true.

Reality is changing. But in the lair of the Holders, it changes even faster. Slower. It doesn't. Time is weird there. And nowhere is it more apparent than where Lilo is.

Have you ever been in a room with barely any light and no sound? It can't be recommended. Such deprivation can cause one to see and hear things that aren't there if you stay there long enough, twiddling your thumbs and freaking out about how you can't hear the rush of blood in your body.  
And when he first spies it in what ought to be a corner, Lilo thinks this is what's happening to him. Then it drifts closer, as though inside a bubble, and he sees all six of them gathered in the patient lounge, doctor regurgitating his speech without words - through _vibrations_ , almost... and he knows he's seeing and "hearing" things that _are_.

Or were. Or will be.

True **silence** is not just hitting the mute button on one's self. **True silence** is doing so while the rest of the world goes on. It is being so distant from society and responsibility and everything else that, after a while, one dissipates into the other.  
People underestimate this Holder, this Object, for they cannot experience it until they seek it themselves. They do not know **the power it brings**.  
He closes his eyes and his ears and absorbs what can and does and is feared will happen, from all prongs of time. He hears all that Wood does and understands it far better, knowing what led up to their calls for help. He sees them all prepare, fall short, break loose; he sees others succeed where they did not, break where they did and did not. He even scratches the surface on the secrets **They** keep... but can go no deeper.

As nearly omniscient as this role is, there are still things greater than it.

It is the **silence** that allows him to do this. **The silence that he guards.** That envelopes him with this expanse. And think: this is an Object that he himself cultivated, even before this quest was a part of him.  
 **Anyone could create it, earn this, if they so wanted.** Anyone could start their journeys by **stealing what is his. He may not want to lose it** \- but, knowing what must happen in the end so well, he has no choice.

Could its usurper be **you?**

**Be honest. Do you want what he has? Do you want to be on par with demigods? Even if the cost is never to speak, never to leave this place until someone else shoulders your relief and leaves you with burden; never interfering, only observing... Would you give all your agency up if you could Just Understand?**

**Do not try to cover your nod, if it is what you wish. Let it open up this road for you. Let It All Out.**

**Have you done that?**

**Good. Then Here Is What To Do.**

**In Any City, In Any Country, Go To Any Mental Institution Or Halfway House You Can Get Yourself To. Beware What Lurks Along The Way, And Cut It Short, For It Won't Help You Here.**

**Muffle Your Footsteps. Quiet Your Churning Gut. Tear Off Your Drumhead And Mute Its Beat, Your Weary Human Heart.** **You Will Live.**

**Give The Worker That Awaits You A Blank Piece Of Paper. Ask, In Your Own Way, For The Holder Of Silence.**

**Ask For Lilo.**

**Ask For Me.**


End file.
